Golden Time:Volume4 Chapter2
Status: Incomplete
13% completed (estimated)
Golden Time 4: Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Heavy, explosive, very forceful... such a sound has the word 'woman,' but overall, whether his lover was a suitable and beautiful woman or not, she was certainly complicated.
Nonetheless, he instinctively felt there was something uncalled for in Kaga Kouko today. She was being strangely heavy, and explosive.
Still lying down on the bed, his body feeling heavy and nearly dead from fever, Banri was watching Kouko and his friends seated close by in the narrow room, envious of their excellent condition.
"I really was just kidding. I just thought it would be funny if I said you were cheating. I was trying to get a laugh."
Closest to Banri's bed, positioned right next to the mattress, her head held high and sitting beautifully with her legs to one side, truly the princess, Kouko broke the silence. A silk handkerchief spread across her lap, she covered her legs elegantly as if she were out on a picnic date.
Her smile was composed. She had an aura of calm. She had the appearance of born royalty.
"After all, there is no way my Tada-kun would cheat on me."
Before anybody could think about shaking their heads or interrupting with a snort,
"Tada-kun loves me completely after all. Of course I know that. ...He loves me!"
Suddenly sitting up straight, the veins popped in her temples and her voice rose. Ooh... everybody pulled back a little.
"Or rather, that absolute confidence makes me grow stronger and stronger. The power of being loved runs through me and makes me feel even better, and that in turn makes you... ouch!"
Left to herself, she would have been able to keep on talking forever, but Linda, who was seated next to her, struck her near her white elbow.
"But didn't you look really serious just now!? Seriously, cut it out. For a moment there you really scared me!"
"You're imagining things."
Rubbing the stricken area in a strangely happy way, Kouko elegantly fluttered her big eyelashes with their jet-black mascara. With a light purple eye shadow softly feathered, she was today again so feminine she glowed.
Behaving that way to the extreme, bearing herself like a beautiful actress, she pulled out from her bag some sort of small, round thing only a girl would have, a container the likes of an oyster shell.
"Should I be so strangely suspicious towards the Linda-senpai who came to the aid of my destined Tada-kun? Though I had thought that NANA-senpai would be here too. Has she returned to her place next door?"
She scooped out some of the contents with her ring finger. When Linda answered "Yes, she did," she continued, saying "What a shame, I really wanted to thank her," and then rubbed her soft lips with that fingertip. What she had taken with her finger looked like rose-pink lip gloss, and the sparkle of the melting glaze colored her well-shaped womanly lips more and more beautifully.
Like that, deliberately, she turned towards Banri and her eyes turned gentle. No voice coming out, the others unable to see her expression, she communicated only with Banri, her lips moving,
"Are you okay?"
She said; just the one phrase.
I'm fine, thank you, said Banri, also voicelessly, nodding only to Kouko. Across Kouko's white cheeks, a gentle smile slowly broadened.
Already, there was absolutely no way he was going to speak about having seen such a face, Banri thought.
Kouko had placed the bouquet of roses, her gift to him, by his bedside, just like flowers by a gravestone. ...It's fragrance was now getting rather too strong for his sick body. If he could, he'd set it aside quickly, it was so...
She was missing the mark, but there was no lie in her sincerity. In Kouko's gaze a genuine love was growing, unsullied by even one drop of mud.
When you are dedicated to something that way, you don't worry about your own condition.
Besides, as always--- there was still the matter of the photo. He didn't think that would be touched upon right now.
The picture of him and Linda together, taken in the old days. Banri wondered if Kouko had taken it with her. It was a possibility. Kouko had come down to this room so many times now, and besides there was what happened a few days ago, the day of the Omaken rehearsal. In the middle of that rainstorm. To Banri, it seemed she had gotten awfully unstable emotionally, and had simply burst out into tears for no reason he could understand.
Now, thinking about it, to put it simply, he wondered if it was because she had seen the picture of himself with Linda.
He felt like he had to double-check: Had she perhaps seen the picture? And then taken it? And then, if it seemed like it, then he had to explain the truth to her. Between this and that, tied together with his memory loss, he had not spoken yet to Kouko of his earlier time with Linda.
But, looking like that at his lover smiling at him, he didn't feel particularly able to broach that topic just now.
Besides, in reality, Kouko probably had nothing to do with his losing the picture.
It was simply somewhere, perhaps stuck between the pages of a book. It was likely, and he thought he would prefer that to have happened. First and foremost, being together with Linda in this situation, he didn't think he could just ask straight out from the start.
Giving up everything, putting his own heart to rest, Banri filled his nasal cavities with the sweet smell of the roses. He grew even more dizzy. Kouko let her gentle smile slip from Banri, turning towards Linda.
"Linda-senpai, once again, thank you very much. For your having cared for my Tada-kun, as a woman, I am truly grateful. Please please convey my gratitude to NANA-senpai as well."
"Yes, of course, I was just going to say that. Because we were planning on heading to school once she got back, I was going to do it then. Or rather, if it's all right with you, may I give your contact information to NANA-senpai? That way, if something happens like this time again, though we don't want it to happen, then she'll be able to contact you directly, right away."
"Yes! Sure! Of course! I don't mind!"
Suddenly the well raised 'good girl', she made the expression of the devoted underclassman, nodding and answering to Linda,
"You sure do put on an incredible show. That was completely different from what you were saying a little bit ago."
The voice that burst out in undisguised amazement was that of Yanagisawa Mitsuo.
As Kouko's childhood friend, formerly her unrequited (they say she was even stalking him) partner in love, at the moment you could call him her natural enemy, kept close. Better known as: Yana-ssan.
Anyway, he was a handsome guy, who even when he was dressed simply, in a short gray shirt and old blue-jeans, just by being part of the background, he made Banri's ordinary room look like a stylish movie set. And beyond that, though even in the worst of times he was blessed with the appearance of a natural airhead, lately, because of his new hair-style, his wildness and masculinity has grown rapidly. What's more, having been referred for a moving job by his film studies club upperclassmen, and having started working there, the muscles of his upper body were standing out more and more. He was a guy whose popularity was skyrocketing.
Mitsuo, still sitting cross-legged across from Kouko, with whom he had various complicated connections.
"What're you acting all Miss Goody Two-shoes for? It creeps me out."
He shrugged his shoulders.
Speaking of Kouko,
"...Huh?"
For the moment, she still had a smiling face.
But her gaze alone sharpened to an irritated glare, as cold as a perfect icicle, scowling daggers at Mitsuo.
But as you might expect from their having known each other a long time, even if against his will, even such a look as that wasn't going to silence Mitsuo. 'I wonder if he's immune?' Banri thought as he looked from the one to the other. He had a feeling that if eyes such as those were directed at him, his own will would be burnt out in an instant.
"Don't give me 'huh?' Weren't you just now making a lot of noise, 'It's cheating, cheating, cheating I say! Tada-kun is cheating on me! This is absolutely cheating, cheating, cheating! Phaa!' It was jealousy, plain as day. Right, Two Dimensions? In fact, that was why you even made us come along with you, wasn't it? You even said something like 'Restrain me! In case of emergency, restrain me with all your might!' That's a fact!"
"...Err, well..."
Suddenly, Two Dimensions caught the smoothly talking handsome guy's shoulder.
For now, even though his real name was Satou Takaya, many of his friends had entirely forgotten the fact, or never knew at all, he figured.
Two Dimensions, like somebody from the petit bourgeoisie, was quietly watching Kouko's expression. Banri couldn't see him. But, as a result of having watched Kouko's expression,
"...Well, in that area, in three dimensional relationships, I know nothing at all!"
It looked like Two Dimensions had decided it was time to change the subject. Setting a serene smile on his face and twisting his black-rimmed glasses a little,
"Or should I say, good morning! Sorry about that, it's our first meeting and yet we're going on like this. It'd be fine with me if you would please call me Two Dimensions."
Confused in his deception, and realizing it was their first meeting, he smiled in greeting to Linda.
"Two Dimensions? Is that your name?"
Tilting her head in curiosity, Linda directed a kindly, upperclassman-like smile at Two Dimensions.
"Yes, because I've cast aside the three dimensional. As a sign of that, I call myself Two Dimensions!"
"Oh, that's deeep."
"For now, I even have a bride."
"Eh!? There's no way you can marry a character, is there!?"
"My bride is the work of my own heart. Shall I tell you that story now?"
"Ah, no need. I'm Linda, from your same law school. I'm a second-year participating in the Omaken with Banri and Kouko-chan. Good to meet you, Two Dimensions."
"And it's good to meet you too! Ah, and it's pleasure, to unexpectedly connect with those above me!"
"You haven't joined any clubs?"
"I haven't managed to fully enter one, so here I am. Senpai, you haven't been introduced to Yanagisawa here before, have you?"
"I've spoken with Yanagisawa-kun, or rather Yana-ssan, a bit over one of his courses before. Right?"
Linda started to look towards Mitsuo when suddenly her hand was pulled to the side,
"Linda-senpai, could you please forgive Mitsuo? Mitsuo is rather sick in the head."
That was Kouko.
Softly placing Linda's hand on her own chest, "Sick, or rather, to be blunt, his head is full of crap! It's no good!" she drove home the point, her face serious. At the sight of Kouko speaking like that in spite of her princess-like looks, Linda snorted,
"'Full of crap!' What a way to talk!"
"But it's true! This kid looks normal, but he is in the habit of lying. The poor thing, he doesn't even know what he is saying. His brain is going bald on the outside, and inside is hollow, like an idiot. Or rather, he really is going to go bald, very soon now! Because that perm solution will have made all his roots go away!"
"Huh!? Kouko, you have such a way with words! There's no way I'm going to forgive you for dissing my roots!"
"Oh boy, another seizure."
Mitsuo reared back, forcing himself unnaturally, a faint, malicious smile on his lips, and said to Kouko,
"Are you... full of crap!?"
And,
"You were shouting 'come along with me,' so helplessly we,"
"Yes, yes that's right! In Mitsuo's world that's how it is! He understood. That's good!"
Kouko, her hands clasped together beneath her chin, the very the picture of the heroine on the cover of a girl's comic book, blinking her eyes adorably over and over again,
"Well, then, will you leave!? The entrance is over there!"
With a serious look on her face, suddenly jerking her finger to one side, she said, "Mitsuo, go home."
"..."
When he didn't win with his mouth, Mitsuo was left with his strength. All of a sudden he grabbed the end of Kouko's chin forcefully, his thumb at the tip,
"Shall I give your butt-chin a bleeding hemorrhoid!?"
He was crossing a bit over into Seikima II.
"Kyaaaaa! It's breaking, it's breaking, it's breaaaakkking!"
Tell the struggling Kouko to shut up and bending roughly over her... seen from the side it was like a rape scene from a movie. Of course, Kouko resisted him with a desperate expression, her beautifully painted fingernails reaching violently, catching his long hair like eagle's talons,
"Oh you sonnafa...! You, you, you don't pull on my hair! Let go!"
"And you let go of my chin! You started it!"
While the pair of childhood friends looked like they were grabbing each other unseemingly, and were starting to roll on the floor noisily,
"Hey! Stop fighting! I mean, you're making noise next to a sick person!"
<~~13% Completed~~>
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